At every stop along her academic journey, Raquel Baker has endeavored to put into practice the ideals she has learned through her study of the humanities.

Baker, a graduate student in English at The University of Iowa, has been involved in organizing the UI’s contribution to the National Sustainability Teach-in, a Graduate College Professional Development workshop on creating inclusive classrooms, and Craft, Critique, and Culture—an interdisciplinary conference focusing on the intersections among critical and creative approaches to writing both within and beyond the academy.

Baker also will be earning a certificate from the Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry.

“The programs at The University of Iowa are allowing me to develop into the scholar that I want to be – engaged, interdisciplinarily trained, and committed to work with students,” Baker said.

Baker received a bachelor’s degree in psychology at San Francisco State University and an MFA in creative writing at Mills College. While in California, she served as a writing tutor for the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison. “I am most proud of that work,” Baker said. “I realized how studying creative writing and literature helps make us human – even in inhuman places.”